@2 Almost as if there's a painful void in their lives that requires constant validation and attention to assuage? They've got to drag people down since they can't seem to elevate themselves. It's no coincidence they also choose vapid and destructive ideologies to excuse their own behavior.

Let's say it is a delusion. Is the Britain that lived under that "delusion," producing the most free, wealthiest and strongest powers in the world, introducing the Common Law and upholding the quiet honor due ordinary people leading ordinary lives so obviously superior to the present Britain, the own Dawkins and his ilk have created?

Where English girls are raped by Muslim savages en masse and protected by the BBC and HMG?

Two days ago, it was reported that Pope Francis said: God opens heaven's doors to non-believers who "obey their conscience," shaking a widely-held assumption about Christian beliefs and reinforcing his image as the most progressive pontiff in history.

"You ask me if the God of the Christians forgives those who don't believe and who don't seek the faith," Francis wrote in a little known 2013 open letter published in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Francis was responding to questions from the paper's 91-year-old founder Eugenio Scalfari, reports Britain's The Independent.

The Biblical illiteracy of the reporter, and those who take this to mean that "atheists can go to heaven" is nothing short of astounding. Pope Francis said nothing new or controversial. It's straight out of Romans.

"Of course, most of Dawkins's errors don't rise to the level of logical fallacy, as no one has hitherto bothered to name such "arguments" as "appeal to irrelevant anecdote involving Alfred Hitchcock". "

There is a certain feral wariness when it comes to progressives and their form of argumentation. They are aware that a categorical statement, much less a categorical argument, will leave them vulnerable to looking like idiots if anyone looks close. The practical problem they face however, is that when they demand that the population sacrifice their own interests in no uncertain terms, that same population is likely to demand no uncertain reasons for doing so; not just another chorus of "Kumbaya" and "Feelings".

As I have seen on this site as well as a number of others, rational men are beginning to take note of and point to the pseudo-logical posturing of the self-anointed "reality based community" of the left.

We all recall that David Hackett Fisher listed hundreds of "Historian's fallacies" which were, given the field, envisioned more as predicate or conceptual errors, than as missteps in a formal process of inference.

Having opened the door for critical historians to enjoy themselves, the dweeb class promptly marched through in search of polemical materials they might deploy.

The number of "fallacies" thought to be useful by the average geekling seems only to have multiplied exponentially since then.

I'd be hard pressed to categorize what some of the current fallacies are even supposed to be in broader terms.

Copi noted that informal fallacies were often terminological or definitional errors, and traditionally seen as fallacies of relevance or ambiguity.

Formal and deductive errors of the kind logicians take seriously, wherein say, one affirms the consequent rather than the antecedent of a conditional proposition in a hypothetical argument, are the kind of errors that little wannabe lefty logicians are very much less likely to point out. Probably because they are hardly aware of them.

As long as the atheist's reasoning is subjugated to his sensuality, it will prove very difficult for him to believe in G-d. Everything they do is an outflow of this.

The atheist's reasoning ability is difficult in the extreme. If his reasoning ability wasn't so retarded, he would believe. Atheism is not a new idea. It just rears it's ugly head when man is morally and mentally degenerate.

The scriptures are clear on this issue and describe the so-called atheist quite poignantly:

The wrath of G-d is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about G-d is plain to them, because G-d has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world G-d’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

For although they knew G-d, they neither glorified him as G-d nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal G-d for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore G-d gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about G-d for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of G-d, so G-d gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.

(cf. Romans 1:18ff.)

This is G-d's perspective on the so-called atheist mind and his limited ability to reason. Notice that G-d assumes men inherently know Him. G-d is clear that ignorance or agnosticism is no excuse, for men willfully suppress the truth. G-d assumes that what may be known about Him has been made plain to us by, because He has made it plain to us. G-d tells us clearly we are without excuse.

Like it or not, we have to deal with these sobering assertions. The atheist is terrified to confront these assertions because these assertions conflict with his physical desires and he knows it.

We should be grateful for G-d's perspective on these matters. He Himself testifies that He has made it foolproof. But there's the rub: the fool [literally in the Hebrew, the withered man] has said in his heart there is no G-d. So, there's that.

Atheists: men who do not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of G-d, knowledge which G-d has made plain to them; men who claim to be wiser than everyone else, but are the most foolish and therefore most pitiable of men.

Following your own recommendation, I will no longer use my own real name to comment here. Since I have no VFM number assigned, I am calling dibs on the number Pi. I am a funny guy like that. I can identify myself to VD if he so requires.

@13 I totally second your suggestion. It has that hint of Streisand Effect we all know that atheists love.

Read TIA long after I bought it. The footnotes and Euthyphro dilemma dialogue are worth the price of admission. Ever wanted to see what a conversation between Socrates and Vox would be like? Buy the book.

laboratories are clear: random doesn't lower entropy. Evolution doesn't happen. It all comes down to religion of materialism Versus What Jesus said and did.

Or people just aren't "looking". eg. Dicky Dawks. It was good to hear him trying to grasp and defend Western tradition though. As if he has some hope left. lovable old fool set fire to his house and now just wanders.

As a result of visiting Lefty relatives this Christmas season I've become aware that their ENTIRE basis of belief is anecdotes. Here's a sad story about a Muslim who had trouble entering the US -- therefore restrictions on immigration are bad. Here's a sad story about a woman who needed an abortion and had trouble getting one -- therefore limits on abortion are bad. Here's a sad story about a drug addict who was turning his life around but got busted for dealing and now will spend years in jail. Here's a sad story about a black person. Here's a sad story about a woman. Here's a sad story about a gay man. Here's a sad story about the weather. Here's a sad story about . . .

Over and over and fucking OVER again. It's all anecdotes (none of them verifiable, of course). All feels.

This is a weakness of conservatives: we don't do sad stories well. How do you tell a sad story about losing hegemony or economic growth? How do you tell sad stories about the inventions and businesses which never come to pass because of over-regulation?

In the end everyone is butt naked, pig ignorant, blind to the nearest sodomite doorway, infantile.

It really ends with "Christians are the only intellectuals".

by that I don't mean we necessarily know or work out what's going on in Area 51 type situations between alien hybrids and humans in black budget technology research. It's more what those dumb muddaa............ are doing isn't really that important. They lose. They eternally lose. They define losers with their very being. Their mindsets are broken their philosophies bankrupt their aspirations delusional.

Trimegistus @16: This is a weakness of conservatives: we don't do sad stories well. How do you tell a sad story about losing hegemony or economic growth? How do you tell sad stories about the inventions and businesses which never come to pass because of over-regulation?

I've been thinking about it since it came up in another thread, and the absence of sterility is the presence of generativity. You could describe a man playing with his kids in the backyard as his wife watches indulgently, identifying bugs and planting seeds in their little garden, and now that's never going to happen. He was responsibly waiting until he was doing as well as his own dad did before starting a family, and that never happened because of authoritarian globalist policies damaging the job prospects for regular Joes like him.

Let them have the negative anecdotes. Take the positive fables and win.

Yes, no doubt. And the great irony is that man can and should achieve recognition of G-d through the use of his own rational and reasoning intellect. What so many fail to understand, is that the wherever the Bible asks man to recognize G-d, it appeals not to man's faith but to his reason. Men need only use their faculty of reason properly and free their mind from emotional bias and they can't help but find Him.

Our Sages inform us that man denies the existence of G-d not simply because He cannot be perceived by the senses, but also because He can be detected by reason, and reason no struggles to find G-d because it makes little to no effort to seek Him. Most people are not all that anxious to find Him, as the very idea of the existence of such a G-d is quite inconvenient to their physical desires to which they happily bow and pay homage. We read in numerous Psalms that at such periods of depravity such was we are experiencing even now, that G-d has always looked down from on high to see whether men, by using whatever modicum of uncorrupted, rational reason that might yet possess, are not attempting to "seek and find" G-d. If a man's reason hasn't been completely subsumed by his sensuality, he may yet find his way to G-d before it's too late.

But, of this we are certain, all men believe in the end. Every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that He is the L-rd of all the earth who made them and Who, in is infinite love and mercy, only desired to educate them.

"Oh, what a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to G-d, who delivers me through Y'shua the Messiah our L-rd" (cf. Romans 7)

Our Sages inform us that man denies the existence of G-d not simply because He cannot be perceived by the senses, but also because He can be detected by reason, and reason no struggles to find G-d because it makes little to no effort to seek Him.

God is comprehended by imagination, intuition, reason, touch, opinion, sense, and name and so on... while on quite the other hand we find we can't begin to understand Him so to some it seems a shame to go on...

But he is all things in all. And he is nothing in any. He is often found in one thing small, conversely He is often missed in many.

I've had number of discussion with atheists. It always comes down to two arguments. evolution and bad things happening. When it comes to all the big questions about origins, the standard answer is "we have faith that science will answer these questions someday.

perhaps the darkest secret in all science Shevi is that everything is decaying. Devolution is science; evolution, including the abiogenesis bit, is "faith".It's hysterical really.Not all Christians are intellectuals, but, the only intellectuals are Christians.Universities, are a standing joke now in these pages. Along with cat lady and 'the train is fine'.

@17 PG. Natural processes do not decrease entropy. Some of them move it around in useful and interesting ways. One of these is a refrigerator. The ice cube has less disorder than the water before it froze. This excess disorder, plus a toll, is paid off at the hot coils at the back of the refrigerator. The existence of extra order in the molecules of the ice cube is not evidence that the ice cube is designed. Appeals to closed-system thermodynamics when reasoning about dissipative processes (look it up) are naive, and undermine the conclusions they seek to bolster.

That the atoms, the molecules, and the reasoning observer exist at all, now that is a miracle. AMDG.

thanks VFM, See refrigerators just spring up all over the place, randomly. During the Australian Gold Rush ice was shipped from Canada to Melbourne so the new rich could enjoy ice in their gin and tonic. How naive of me. I see what you mean. Open systems, now novel. An open door universe into which there is a net flow of directed energy that locally lowers entropy such that net entropy decreases in the entire universe. I would call that something to behold. Worth putting a Name to. Perhaps the Masonic G ineffable type name?

No, I don't think most people can even think about the problem. Trouble is at the molecular scale of things one can't measure the heat difference between two "slightly distorted guitars". Degeneration and net increases in entropy more than cancel any mathematical possibility local beneficial accumulation in information. It was, Haldane, without the entropy argument, who framed the problem in rough terms.

the problem is religion. Laboratory science just gets in the way of a good evolution creation story.

@8"That's funny. I have never seen one criticize a muslim during ramadan, a jew during Hannukah, etc."

What will be even funnier is their pining for those salad days when folks could have chutzpah and piss all over cultural norms without having a hand or head chopped off.

@18:"How do you tell a sad story about losing hegemony or economic growth? How do you tell sad stories about the inventions and businesses which never come to pass because of over-regulation?"

I don't think you could get most folks on that side of the fence to budge even if you had personal stories and flow charts to share. "Those whom one cannot instruct," etc. Hence "Enjoy the decline" and the brothel/burka/mudhut dilemma that have been harped on here.

The definition of a universe has to be thoroughly broken, yet the word retained, in order to maintain the argument that entropy in an "open system" can be locally reversed simply by sufficient energy inflow. Our universe, the only one we have experimental data on, exhibits macro structures that are unimaginably large and complex. The standard model provides neither time nor mechanism for the formation of these. Appealing to unobservables (multiverses, etc) explicitly abandons the prior dogma that what is observable is all there is. Rational people on both sides of the creation / evolution divide have noticed this.

APL, [a summary]in philosophy there is the epistemological brick wall, of Kurt Godel and Frederic Fitch.in cosmology nothing is provenin irreducibly complex systems exhibiting chaos nothing can modeled and meaningfully predicted or derivative.in medicine consciousness is neither located nor explainedlove, life and beauty remain metaphysical.in linguistics, and indeed all information systems, per se, we have no adequate explanations; they are irreducibly complex systems, impossible to iterate.

In Summary the appeal to God as the acausal cause and only justification and sanctification is not only sane, it is the only sanity.

If there are but minutes on the clock, decide quickly which One with every reasonable scientific forensic fact available to you.

"Galileo was found "vehemently suspect of heresy", namely of having held the opinions that the Sun lies motionless at the centre of the universe [snip] and that one may hold and defend an opinion as probable after it has been declared contrary to Holy Scripture."

And yes, I cite wiki.

I grant you, the bit about the flat earth was .... artistic licence on my part.

@APL - None? I can think of a half dozen brilliant scholars off the top of my head who have publicly debated in defense of Christianity. Or are you saying that you expect someone here to address your unwritten doubts?

@12-I notice people saying "logical fallacy" when they really should be using a term like "argumentative fallacy." Even then, "fallacy" can be a stretch. This includes the website "your logical fallacy is," which I currently stumbled upon. I could argue my way out of various of their supposed fallacies, and I'm no expert on formal logic.

@APL - The link is a full history of the collapse of the Ptolemaic model, including all of the relevant politics (and lack of proof) that led to Galileo's downfall. You can start in section 8, since it has a summary.

39. APL December 29, 2015 6:01 AMFor a species that only four hundred years ago, was persecuting Galileo for contradicting the then settled Christian doctrine of the flat earth and Geocentric universe,

hint: it didn't have a damn thing to do with Galileo suggesting a heliocentric universe. hell, even the RCC wasn't asserting a Geocentric universe as 'true' and the Pope and the Jesuits were both supporting him. until ....

also, the Flat Earth theory being dominant in the West is a fiction created in the late 1800s. Western Europeans ( starting with the Greeks hundreds of years before Christ ) *knew* that the Earth was round over 1400 years before Columbus sailed west.

"Aspects of the new 'faith' are empirically testable. Not much of the old faith is, nor does it differ much from other, older doctrine in that respect.

But no one has yet come forward to put the case that Christian doctrine is superior than Islamic, Jewish or Hindu doctrine."

Oh, the Double Down. I've never seen that here before. Whatever shall I do?

You really are a target rich environment. Let's start at the beginning, with some of your implied claims for your new religion.

Firstly, there is no conflict between science and Christianity. Science is not the exclusive property of unbelievers. Indeed, as it is presently constructed, science was invented BY Christians FOR the express honour of the Christian God, in recognition of his character of rational predictability (i.e. of upholding his laws in all places and times). You might recognise this concept.

Secondly, there is nothing whatsoever testable about the presumption of naturalism. It is an illuminating error, but one so vast in its implications that many miss it for the same reason it is difficult for a man living in Basingstoke to see Britain.

It is ludicrously common amongst unbelievers. But just so we're straight about this point: naturalism is an axiom. It is ... well, axiomatic that you cannot prove your axioms. They go at the beginning of your argument, not at the end. Your pretense that naturalism is a conclusion, an opinion formed as the consequence of your argument, is revealing of a senseless disregard for the very tools on which you claim to be relying to make your whole case.

You cannot even form a simple logical argument, yet you think to convince people that you have sole undisputed possession of the answers to the greatest questions ever pondered by mankind?

Really?

Your opinions are vacuous, your conclusions risible, your pretense to reason a gross presumption without any visible foundation, and the only thing at all interesting about you thus far is your psychopathology, which is itself so common as to be utterly unremarkable.

As for your errant nonsense about Galileo, here too you simply parrot the idiocies of the crowd. Setting aside that you were wrong on the facts, your argument still makes no sense. All your callow and slavish adherence to what you think is the modern scientific consensus indicates, is that YOU would have followed the crowd in exactly the same way had you lived in Galileo's time, and persecuted him as did his fellow scientists. You show no intellectual courage whatsoever and your waving of Galileo's case as a banner against Christianity, while you know nothing of the actual facts, simply underlines your inability or unwillingness to reason for yourself.

"But no one has yet come forward to put the case that Christian doctrine is superior than Islamic, Jewish or Hindu doctrine."

Almost forgot.

An enormous proportion of the writing of the host of this blog, addresses precisely this question. Indeed, much of the content of the blog addresses directly this question, and even more indirectly.

No-one? Seriously? You enter into this controversy wholly unaware of the centuries of scholarship and public debate that have addressed this very question? The literal libraries of books that address this very question?

Exactly what sort of response did you anticipate to this cosmic scale blunder on your part?

I am sorry, but your ignorance of any of the countervailing evidence is not a demonstration that your opinion is correct.

Not to a man who refuses to do the experiment. But fine, let that slide for now. I won't even mention the implied concession you've just carefully avoided making explicit [cough!].

"And on the basis of Christian scripture, the Koran or Torah you and those of other religions like you, claim authority that you don't actually have."

This is simply nonsense. I claim no such authority. Nor do I deride people for choosing a different unprovable axiom to my own personally preferred one. I don't misrepresent their arguments or their philosophy. I don't try to hound them out of public office or the public sphere simply because they express a preference for a different axiom. I don't lie about history.

I do not pretend that the only reasons one could possibly prefer a different axiom to my own are (A) madness, (B) evil, (C) stupidity, or (D) ignorance.

No, that's how your high priests play the game. That's the bullshit you bought here dripping from your every false assertion.

I didn't insult you. I simply told you the plain truth about your woeful ignorance, your utter failure to think, and your abject submission to irrational self-justifications invented wholesale by other unbelievers who long pre-date you.

I understand why you feel insulted. I was once ignorant and foolish, too.

There's plenty of room for disagreement here, and mostly it is civil and amicable. That scripture you still cannot keep yourself from ignorantly sneering at says this:

"You reap what you sow"

- and that's exactly what happened to you here. But that is not all it says on this matter, for it also says this:

"Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind"

You see, some acts are asymmetric in their consequences. A match is a small thing, but how great a matter is a forest fire. A moment's inattention is a small thing, but how great a matter is a 47 car pile-up on the freeway.

You had enough, or you want some more?

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